


Milestones

by SilverSiren17



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Attempted Suicide, Clone Wars, Drabbles, Family, Feels, Fluff, Mando’a, Order 66, ahsoka is everyone’s little sister, but not too many, or big sister in some cases, references to Rebels, rex is a good big bro
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-10-09 15:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17409356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverSiren17/pseuds/SilverSiren17
Summary: These are the milestones by which Ahsoka Tano measures her life.(Or, I wanted to write a bunch of sentimental drabbles about Ahsoka and her “family”)





	1. Youngling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first couple of chapters are very short, but once you get to the third they start getting a little longer and more fluffy...

 

At three years old Ahsoka does not understand the magnitude of the decision she has just made. She knows only that her tribe has been distant towards her ever since the morning her aunt found Ahsoka making her toys float, and that this stranger is kind and understanding and something about him makes her feel warm and safe. He calls her Little ‘Soka and despite his strange features and unfamiliar language she trusts him immediately and implicitly as only a child can. So she takes his hand and lets him lead her away from the only home she’s ever known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this please leave a kudo, or even better a comment (comments give me life and inspiration)! Thanks for reading!


	2. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s ten when the war begins and doesn’t yet understand just what it means.

Ahsoka is ten when the war begins. She’s only just gotten her crystal and is eager to begin her training. For as long as she can remember Ahsoka has known that she will be apprenticed to her finder, Master Plo Koon, when the time comes and at ten she is supposed to leave the creche and become a padawan learner, but Master Plo (they call him General now, not Master, which she does not understand yet but soon will) tells her that while she’s old enough to be a padawan she is not old enough to be in a war. He tells her to stay in the temple, to learn all she can before she has to join him in the field. She doesn’t understand why, she’s a  _Jedi_ and she just got her lightsaber and it  _hurts_ that he doesn’t trust her to watch his back when he’s fighting (when she’s older she will understand and be grateful to him for giving her a little longer to be a child before she is thrust into battle too young). But she trusts Master Plo with the same unshakeable faith made her follow him away from her family as a child (years in the future that trust with be irrevocably shattered by a false accusation and a farce of a trial, but Ahsoka doesn’t know that yet and perhaps that’s for the best) and so she does as he says. She throws herself into her lessons and waits impatiently for the day she is sent to join him.


	3. Thirteen

She’s thirteen when she is finally made a padawan, but not Master Plo’s. She doesn’t know what to think at first because she’s never even considered the possibility of training under a Jedi other than Plo Koon, but Master Yoda himself chose her new Master so it can’t be wrong, right? Besides, for the last three years she has heard about the exploits and adventures of the great General Anakin Skywalker, knows the rumors about the Chosen One, the Hero with No Fear; so it’s with equal measures of nerves and excitment that she boards the transport to Christophis. 

Master Skywalker is not pleased to see her. He tells her he doesn’t want a padawan (Master Kenobi seems incredibly amused by the whole situation) and says he doesn’t need a younling trailing about getting in his way. Ahsoka is furious. She is not  _youngling_ she’s thirteen and a  _padawan_ whether he likes it or not (she resolves to dislike her new master) and tells him so in no uncertain terms. 

“You’re stuck with me Skyguy,” she tells him with a smirk and the clone captain (Rex? She thinks his name is Rex) bursts into surprised laughter at his General’s expression, which leads to him being assigned to watch her, much to both their displeasure. 

* * *

Later, after the battle is won Master Skywalker tells her she’s reckless (he’s one to talk), that she never would have made it as Master Kenobi’s padawan, but that she might make it as his (she thinks that maybe he isn’t so bad after all, feels the fragile beginning of a training bond tugging at the edges of her thoughts).

* * *

Ahsoka bounces onto the  _Resolute_ with an enthusiastic energy that seems to amuse the tired and slightly confused clones (it’s well known among the 501st that Anakin Skywalker does not want anything to do with an apprentice) and when she recieves a small nod from Rex as she passes him on her way to her new bunk she thinks that maybe she’s taken a step towards that experience he values so highly.

As she lays in her bunk she thinks about her new Master. He’s not like Master Plo (not really like any Jedi she’s met before), but maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s better. She’s beginning to think that this assignment isn’t so terrible after all. She thinks she hears the echo of a chuckle through the beginnings of her training bond, accompanied a moment later by words:  _Go to sleep little one, we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow._

She snuggles deeper beneath her blanket, murmurs sleepily back, “‘Kay, Goodnight Skyguy.”

There’s a ripple of fond exasperation at the edge of her thoughts and then, just as sleep finally claims her, words, so soft she almost misses them. 

“Goodnight Snips.”


	4. Fourteen

She’s just turned fourteen the first time she hears a clone call her  _vod._ It’s their first night aboard the  _Resolute_ after a particularly long and brutal campaign and all she wants to do is curl up and sleep and not _dream_ because she knows that if she dreams it will be nightmares and she just can’t handle those tonight. But her cabin so _quiet_ and she tosses and turns because usually she likes the queit but tonight it just makes her feel small and alone and something about the darkness of the little room seems threatening after days spent curled up on the ground surrounded by the comforting presence of her Master and her men around her.

It’s a little after 0100 ship time when she slips out of her own bunk and pads down the darkened halls towards the barracks. When she gets there Rex is the only one still awake, sitting up in his bunk finishing a report. He looks up as she enters almost drops the datapad at the sight of the tiny Togruta standing akwardly a few feet away.

“Commander?” He whispers, “What are you doing here?”

”I couldn’t sleep, it’s too quiet. I was hoping there was an empty bunk I could use? Just for tonight.”

Rex takes in her hunched shoulders, the dark circles beneath her eyes, the exhausted droop of her chin. He nods, gestures towards a row to his left, “Over there, by Fives and Echo.”

She nods, murmuring a quick thank you as she scurries off in the direction he indicated. It’s easy to locate her friend’s farmiliar armor and drops into the bunk gratefully. It’s easy to fall asleep here, lulled by the soft breathing and farmiliar force signatures of her men. Rex watches over her until her breating starts to even out, then sets aside his report and carefully makes his way to the bunk where his Commander rests.

Carefully, he reaches out to tug the blanket up to her chin and she looks up at him, big blue eyes blinking in sleepy confusion. He grins, steps back, “Sleep well  _vod’ika_ ,” he murmurs. Ahsoka sleeps.

* * *

 

She wakes the next morning to a soft hum of conversation. A voice, Kix she thinks (she’s too sleepy and comfortable to open her eyes and check at the moment) speaks above her.

”I’m not saying she shouldn’t be here, Rex, I just want to know if our _vod’ika_ is alright.”

”I told you  _vod_ , she said she couldn’t sleep. That it was too quiet.”

”So she came here?” This new voice (Fives she thinks) sounds almost wondering, as if he thought there was somewhere else she would have gone to feel safe enough to sleep.

“So she came here,” agrees Rex.

Ahsoka stretches and yawns, drawing the conversation to a close. She blinks up at them owlishly, Fives and Echo sitting on the bunk beside hers, Kix and Rex standing a few feet away. 

“Time is it?” 

“0805 ship time,” Rex replies calmly, as if they weren’t just talking about her (she’s not sure what to think about what they said, she’s never heard them refer to her a  _vod’ika_ before, and she doesn’t know the word but from the way they said it it doesn’t seem like it’s a new nickname). Her eyes widen and she goes still.

”I was supposed to meet Obi-Wan for meditation at 0800,” she squeaks in panic and scrambles out of her bunk and towards the door, much to the amusement of the watching troopers.

She manages to make it to the meditation session only ten minutes late and Obi-Wan takes one look at the padawan blinking sleep out of her eyes and decides not to scold. Obi-Wan speaks fluent Mando’a and when Ahsoka asks him what  _vod’ika_ means he asks why she wants to know, she almost tells him the truth, but there was something private about the conversation that makes her reluctant to tell him, so she says only that she heard one of the clones say it.

”It means little sibling. I’m sure you’ve heard the troopers calling one another  _vod_? Well, that is the word for brother or sister,  _vod’ika_ means little sibling, while  _ori’vod_ means big sibling.”

Little Sister. She likes it.

 

* * *

 

She’s thought of the clones as her brothers for a long time, but hadn’t thought that they would ever include her as one of their  _vod_. Even Master Skywalker never earned that title, although he is closer with his men then almost any other Jedi. That night when she slips into the barracks to sleep she finds an empty bunk between Rex and Jesse and curls up gratefully. 

“Goodnight Commander,” Rex says softly.

Ahsoka smiles to herself and calls sleepily over her shoulder, “Goodnight  _Ori’vod.”_

She snuggles down into her blanket and closes her eyes, completely missing the look of shock that freezes both Jesse and Rex for a moment, and the delighted surprise that blooms on their faces a moment later.


	5. Too Young

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s fourteen the first time she finds one of her men trying to eat his blaster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for attempted suicide.

Ahsoka Tano is fourteen years old the first time she finds one of her men about to eat his blaster.  It’s nearing 0100 ship time and there’s no one else in the darkened hangar.  The 501st has just returned from a long campaign where they’d lost far too many and gained far too little for the victory to feel like any kind of victory. Normally, when she can’t sleep Ahsoka curls up in an empty bunk in the barracks and lets the farmiliar presences of her men in the force lull her into sleep with a feeling of safety that is so hard to find. Tonight though, she can’t quite bring herself to look any of the  _vode_ in the eye, much less venture into the too-quiet, too-emty barracks and feel the emptiness in the force where so many of her men, her  _brothers_ , should be.

So here she is, wandering aimlessly around the Resolute, when she sees him at the same moment he sees her. She’s across the room in an instant, snatching the blaster from his hands and casting it away, letting the weapon skitter into the shadows. He stares at her and she at him for a minute— then he crumples. There’s no other word for it, he folds in on himself as he sinks to the ground with a soft clatter as his lower body armor hits the durasteel floor.

The Jedi falls with him, wrapping her slender arms around him and pressing herself against the trooper— a shiny, this was probably his first battle. The clone wraps his arms tightly around the Togruta and she lets him cling to her, burying his face in her lekku. She can’t tell whether it’s him or her that’s shaking.

”They’re gone,” he whispers, hoarse and broken, “My entire squad is dead.”

She closes her eyes, holds him tighter and squeezes her eyes shut even as they well with hot tears. She can feel the troopers own tears wetting her shoulder.  What can she say? She was his commanding officer. Ahsoka may not have killed his brothers, or even given the order that got them killed, but their blood is still on her hands.

He doesn’t blame her for their deaths, she can feel that— the only thing he’s feeling right now is an all-consuming despair— for deep inside him is a hard kernel of GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS, and flash training, and the knowledge the Kaminoans drill into each and every one of his brothers, that in the end the Jedi and the Republic had  _bought_ them, that they are  _disposable, replacable,_ that they wouldn’t even  _exist_ if it weren’t for her people. But beyone that, in a place that is deep and raw is a bright ember of  _Men Not Droids_ , and love for his brothers and lacing through that an undeniable bitterness for the Jedi and the Republic that use the clones for their own ends.

Ahsoka Tano is fourteen years old as she sits in the dark holding a trooper barely nine standard who’s just lost everyone he loves and all she can think as the Resolute hurtles through hyperspace and the 501st cries out for their lost brothers as they sleep is that they are both far, far too young for any of this.

”What happens to them? To us?”

His words are too soft for any human ear to catch, but her montrals pick them up perfectly. She knows what he means. What happens to the  _vode_ when they march away? She should tell him that they become one with the Force. That is what any good Jedi would say, but she can feel the raw greif resonating through them both and the fresh memories of holding a dying brother in his arms and having to leave him before he’s taken his last breath on the cold, hard ground of a world that isn’t his, the images playing and replaying through both their minds, and echoing older though no less painful memories of her own. She can’t lie to him. So Ahsoka takes a deep, shuddering breath and says the words that she would never let herself say in any other circumstances.

_”I don’t know.”_


	6. Chapter 6

Ahsoka Tano is just shy of nineteen on the day Order 66 goes out. She’s on patrol with two shinies and she wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss before it was too late except that she’s been teacing CT-0493 (he’s so fresh off of Kamino that he doesn’t even have a name yet, and so  _young_ — only seven— that she thought she might cry when his batch first stepped off of their transport onto Mandalore) how to shield against force users. She reaches out to touch his mind at the same time he gets the command. He goes as blank as his armor, everything that makes him unique and different from his brothers consumed by  **GOOD SOLDIERS FOLLOW ORDERS** and  **EXECUTE ORDER 66– KILL ALL THE JEDI**.

Had she been just a little older, had she not started her padawan training in the midst of the war under Anakin Skywalker she might not have made it. But Ahsoka had been fighting since she was thrust into battle at the age of thirteen, her already force-enhanced reflexes honed by necessity and ruthless training on both Anakin and Rex’s part. She’s spent years fighting and bleeding and suffering alongside the  _vod’e_. Ahsoka Tano is not a one of the Jedi to be shot down by her soldiers in the first horrible moments of the Jedi purge. She is a warrior instead of a peacekeeper after all, a sister before a Commander. She will not die today. 

She reacts without thinking, her dual lightsabers blazing to life in an instant of emerald light, just in time to deflect the first blaster bolt. She leaps up, flipping to land facing the two meat-droids who just seconds before had been her  _verde,_ her  _vod’ika._ She could kill them both easily if she so chose, and they are, after all, trying to kill her. But the Force is already screaming with the death of hundreds of Jedi and besides, she will not— cannot— kill her own men. Ahsoka slashes their blasters in half and takes off before they can react, ‘sabers singing in time with her rapidly beating heart.

She doesn’t know how long she runs before she has to stop, crumpling beside a cliffside that she thinks vaguely is a shit place to mount any kind of defense, but at the moment she’s beyond caring. The Force is wailing at her, beating away at Ahsoka’s rapidly decaying shields. She buries her face in her hands, shoulders heaving as she tries to force herself to calm, to rebuild her shredded shields.

At the sound of footsteps she drags her head up, sapphire gaze fixing on a pair of jaig eyes painted in 501st blue on a farmiliar bucket. She scrambles to her feet, hands drifting towards the lightsabers hanging at her hips. Rex watches her silently, then, suddenly, he lifts his blaster and her blades ignite  _toolatetoolate!_ The blaster bolt flashes by her montrals and she follows it wiht her eyes for a moment before turning to stare again at the Clone Captain. Rex doesn’t miss, not from this close, not unlesss— he raises his wrist as she deactivates her lightsabers.  The comm link opens and a holographic image of  _is that Cody?_ appears. 

“The Jedi has been eliminated, sir.”

“Well done CT-7567.”

Since when does Cody call Rex— since when does any clone— by his number? It is one of the worst things you can call a clone with a name. The comm cuts off and Rex lowers his wrist, looking up at Ahsoka. Painstakingly slowly the clone reaches up and tugs off his bucket, revealing his face. Cautiously, afraid of what she might find, Ahsoka reaches out mentally to the shields that she and Anakin had helped Rex erect (Anakin. They had never broken the training bond but all she can feel on his end is darkness and— she can’t think about that right now, if she does she’ll just break down completely). Rex lets her in and she can’t help but let out a little sob of relief because _it’s him_ , it’s really Rex. Ahsoka springs forward, knocking him back a few steps with the sheer inertia of her flying hug. He wraps his arms around her small frame, resting his chin on the crown of her head.  

“ _Ori’vod_ ,” she murmurs into his pauldron and he finds himself smiling into the stripes of her montrals, despite everything, “What’s going on? My men attacked me!”

“Order 66. It was a back-of-the-book contingency order reverting all GAR command to the Chancellor if the Jedi turned traitor. As soon as it went out everyone just turned off... they’re acting like droids, instead of men.”

“But what—”

“The inhibitor chips. I got mine removed after Fives warned us and was killed on the Chancellor’s orders. That’s the only reason I’m standing here. You’ve been reported dead, so you’d better lay low. Head east and steal a ship. Go somewhere out of the way until things die down a bit.”

She doesn’t miss his wording, “Rex, you’re coming with me!”

“I can’t yet,  _vod’ika_. I have to take care of our  _vod’e_. I have to save what’s left of Torrent Company at least.”

She bites her lip, “Kiros. They’ll hide me there, I think. Meet me there in two weeks. _Be there_.”

He nods, lets her go. She unclips her ‘sabers from her belt and holds them out to him, proof of Ahsoka Tano’s death, he takes them wordlessly. The Clone and the Togruta face eachother for a minute. 

“Stay alive, Ahsoka.”

“You too, Rexter.”

She pauses a moment then flings her arms around him one last time. His arms come around her, faster this time, and if either of them feels the heat of tears against their skin they don’t mention it. Ahsoka pulls in a deep, shuddering breath.

“See you on Kiros.”

He nods, neither of them really believe it. Ahsoka turns and runs again and this time she doesn’t look back. Two weeks later they are both alive and unharmed if not safe or free. Neither of them are on Kiros. They don’t see one another until years later on a rebel ship, both of them made too old by wars that never should have needed to be fought and the loss of friends they never should have had to survive.

“Commander. You got old,” he says.

 “Had to happen sometime, Rex,” she responds wrly before wrapping him in a bone-crushing hug that says more than she ever will. She does not say  _I should have looked harder for you, I shouldn’t have left_ , she doesn’t even say  _I missed you._

He doesn’t tell her,  _I shouldn’t have let you go alone,_ or  _I love you,_ vod’ika.

They are soldiers. They did what they had to. They are here now, safe and alive and the closest to happy either of them has been in a long time. It’s enough. It has to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, another chapter! Thank you for all your lovely comments, I reallly appreciate them! If anyone is interested in being a beta for this story please message me on Fanfiction.net at CompleteNerd14, thanks, hope you enjoy this chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment if you liked it, I’d appreciate the feedback a lot! Thanks!


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